Re: Product cycles too short for small businesses (esp. Red Hat)

On Sun, Sep 07, 2003 at 09:09:40PM -0400, Jay Smith wrote:
> Red Hat's recent change in their product release cycle strategy has major 
> negative implications for a small business such as mine.
<snip> 
> 1) Inexpensive/free product but with short product cycles. This is where 
> all the new stuff would be available, etc.  However, within a year or two 
> they would no longer be supported, including security fixes would not be 
> offered.  The intended user is the casual desktop user, hobbiest, geek, 
> guru, etc., etc.; either those who don't use it hard or use it very hard 
> and want the latest.
> 2) Costly product with very long product cycles.  Little or no 
> enhancement; it is pretty much locked down. However, security updates and 
> the like would be available for a long time.  The intended user is the 
> corporate enterprise running big databases (i.e. Oracle and the like).

Which Redhat product are you talking about?

              Advanced Server (Premium Edition)         - $2499
              Advanced Server (Standard Edition)        - $1499
              Enterprise Server (Standard Edition)      - $799
              Enterprise Server (Basic Edition)         - $349
              Enterprise Workstation (Standard Edition) - $299
              Enterprise Workstation (Basic Edition)    - $179

ALL six versions come with a one year of subscription to the Redhat Network, 
but can be extended.  And I don't know about you but for Corporate support accounts those seem like very reasonable costs to me. 

What you want is for Redhat to provide an UPDATE SERVICE to you for their most inexpensive products for an UNLIMITED time period (well until you decide to upgrade)??

If Redhat were to do this, they would quickly be out of business.  Redhat is currently one of the larger consumers of bandwidth in the Eastern US from all the downloads (mostly free versions), and Redhat returns all their code to GPL projects.  With all they give do you really think you can ask for more?

I think someone is a little spoiled.

Dave V.

-- 
David E Vehrs, System Engineer          Aspen Systems
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Tel: +01 303 431 4606                   Wheat Ridge CO 80033, USA
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